Ghost
by Lars Matthew
Summary: Grantaire died in 1987 and has since then been wandering around with little purpose and no passage to the afterlife. He falls in love with a living man called Enjolras and watches from afar. But everything changes when Enjolras is in an accident and almost dies, being left with the ability to see the dead.


He'd died in '87 and from there wandered aimlessly amongst the living. There wasn't this bright light that absorbed him or some door that appeared just for him in the middle of a room or on a busy street (which he heard rumours from fellow ghosts about), so Grantaire was able to keep the belief that he lived by in life: there wasn't a god. There may have been an afterlife (something he'd always doubted the existence of), the sort where he was stuck on a plane that overlapped with that of the living's, but if there was a god, surely he would be in heaven or even hell.

The afterlife was nothing too special, the living couldn't see or hear him and too often did he wish that the dead couldn't see him either. Ghosts were jerks and a lot of them despised younger spirits. In his first years, he could hardly ask a question without being pushed away or just outright ignored. Older spirits reminded Grantaire of high school teachers: they heard and saw, but never really listened to what you had to say.. By the end of the '90's, he was just starting to be respected by some, but not all.

One of these ghosts that he befriended was called Joly and Grantaire wasn't sure if that was his birth name or some name that Joly had picked up. By social construct, ghosts weren't supposed to ask how the others died, but Grantaire learnt shortly into the friendship that Joly had been hypochondriac in life and often worried that he was dying from various illnesses. He'd been leaving a doctor's appointment and gotten into a car accident when the other driver ran a stop light. Joly added cheerfulness into Grantaire's life and made the other man more at peace with his situation. A natural cynic, Grantaire had withered away in death and resembled something of a corpse. Joly on the other hand had sprouted metaphorical wings from the entire experience and seemed enlightened.

Joly had learnt to forgive in his death and even had befriended the other driver from the accident that ended two lives. Bossuet, the other driver, was an unlucky man who had looked down at his phone when it had buzzed due to low battery, had run the traffic light without even knowing it. He died instantly as his compact car punched into Joly's Subaru. The two became very aware of each other after the crash, Joly having died before the ambulance came of a haemorrhage. Neither of them were very angry, something most ghosts were upon dying. Both had expected that their deaths would have been sooner and of either sickness or terrible luck.

They'd accepted the tragedy and moved on to their little afterlife on Earth. Most days, the two would go out and check up on their living relatives. Most of the ones who had died had moved on to some other afterlife that wasn't in this world, but Bossuet had an uncle who was also in this stage of the afterlife. He and Joly would chat with the uncle and then go off and check up on their parents, siblings and old friends. It wasn't like they could do much with the living, but it must have been nice for the dead to know that their families were okay.

Grantaire, on the other hand, didn't have family that he wanted to check up on much. He'd tell himself that there was a fat chance they even missed him and then he'd go on with his day. Towards the beginning of this second life, he would sneak into art galleries for free and spend days just wandering around. Then he spent time at parks and in all the best places he knew of. As time went on, Grantaire found that cafés were always the best as the scenery changed day to day. He could listen to the living and pretend that he was alive. It was in one of these cafés, a little place on Twelfth Street called the Musain, that Grantaire came across a group of people who would almost become history.


End file.
